The Cobra Event by Richard Preston Read Free Book Online Page A

viruses are made into weapons. Hopkins understood that there were many possibilities as to what they might find in the building they were headed for. Keeping track of what strains of weapons the Iraqis were working with in their laboratories was exceedingly difficult. Some of the possibilities included VEE and EEE (brain viruses), Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, Ebola virus (highly infective in the lungs when it’s freeze-dried), Marburg, Machupo, Rift Valley fever, Lassa, Junin, Sabia, enterovirus 17, camelpox, monkeypox, and smallpox. And there was always the possibility that you would run into a virus that no one had thought could be used as a weapon. You could also run into a virus that you had never heard of before.
                      
    THE NISSAN was a speck moving fast, trailing dust, on a road that went straight over a landscape of browns and grays. The road bent north now. It went through scattered patches of desert brush, and it crossed pans of chalk-white earth. In the distance ahead of them, a line of date palms appeared and passed at an angle. Hopkins noticed headlights behind them, shining through dust in the Nissan’s wake. The Iraqi vehicles were closing the gap.
    Hopkins realized that he had just driven past a single-lane service road. It was unmarked. He spun the wheel and pulled the emergency hand brake at the same time. The Nissan went off the road into some dry flats and spun around in a boil of dust. It disappeared in its own cloud. Suddenly it popped out of the cloud going in the opposite direction, headlights shining, bouncing over open land. With a lurch, the Nissan veered onto the service road. Hopkins gunned the engine. The road headed east.
    “Go left, Will, God damn it!”
    Will swung onto another road. It passed among cotton fields. The plants were green, the cotton bolls ripening in the gray desert air.
    A metal prefabricated building loomed at the end of the road. It was windowless, about forty feet tall. It looked like a warehouse. Silvery vent pipes stuck up from the roof. The structure was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, and there was a gate and a very strong-looking guard post.
    Hopkins removed his foot from the gas pedal and began to slow down.
    “Don’t!” Littleberry said sharply. “Come up to the perimeter like you are not prepared to stop.”
    Hopkins floored the gas. Suddenly, up ahead, there were flashes of light at the guard post. The guards had opened fire in their direction.
    Hopkins gasped. He ducked sideways on the seat. The Nissan slid down the road, out of control.
    Littleberry stared straight ahead into the gunfire, holding the steering wheel for Hopkins. “Get your face out of my lap. They aren’t going to pop a U.N. vehicle.”
    Hopkins peered over the dashboard and took the wheel again. The car was going very fast.
    “The brakes, Will.”
    He jammed on the brakes. Too late. The Nissan spun around backward and slid into the gate, ballooning the wire mesh, punching out both taillights. The gate broke open wide. An instant later, the Iraqi chase cars came screeching and sliding in behind the Nissan in a great cloud of dust.
    A rear door of the Mercedes opened, and a thin young man wearing acid-washed blue jeans and a white short-sleeved polo shirt stepped out. He was wearing an ostentatious gold wristwatch, and he had an anxious expression on his face.
    “Wow, you are really scaring us, Mark,” the young man in jeans said. His name was Dr. Azri Fehdak, but the U.N. inspectors referred to him as the Kid. He was a molecular biologist educated in California. He was believed to be one of the top scientists in Iraq’s bioweapons program.
    “It’s a snap inspection,” Littleberry said to the Kid. “Our chief inspector ordered it.”
    “But there is nothing here,” Azri Fehdak said.
    “What’s this building?”
    “I believe this is the Al Ghar Agricultural Facility.”
    A door to the building stood wide open. Inside, in the dim shadows, the